WITCH MOUNTAIN ( ...Come The Mountain) CD
A very interesting and promising debut album of Portland's heavy progressive doomsters, that offers not only the typical doom stereotype. WITCH MOUNTAIN are cooking their own heavy doom soup, with more influences from different styles. And that doesn't make it easy to write about it. With the opener "Rock On/420" the album leads you into a wrong direction. While this one is more a heavy groovin' mid-tempo rocker, it more changes with the following tracks. Without losing the weighty tight heaviness, WITCH MOUNTAIN are often closer to US bands like the Melvins, Bl'ast, or Würm, that were all influenced by Sabbath, too. "Iron Lung Pt. II" sounds a bit like an undiscovered 80's Melvins song, with a huger 70's spirit. The excellent "A Power Greater" features Lost Goat's Erica Stolz on lead-vocals."Rocaine" is a slow-rolling monster, and once again this band shows their virtousity and talent for complex short parts, interwoven into a sabbatish groove.
The complex patterns in "Iron Lung Pt.III , with a lot of chord changes and breaks is near to the way High On Fire or Operater Generator are working out their musical spectrum. The album closes with the tenth song "The Scientists", that's about 12th minutes + , splitted-up into three very diverse parts. WITCH MOUNTAIN got ideas and creativity to create a refreshing and inspiring heavy doom album, without only repeating the well-known structures. I's full of doom, 70's rock, alternative rock , metal and 80's hardcore, and still a solid unit.This album needs attention while listening and the more it'll grow.I end this review with the first words. This band is really interesting, very promising and I hope, they got the possibilty to reach more people in the future. This CD was realesed by Rage Of Achilles in 2001, and it's a pearl that should be dicovered by you. To sum it up: A must-have for every open-minded doomster! Visit the WITCH MOUNTAIN website for details.
(KK)